Anyone care to speculate on the chess game in the How to Train Your Dragon books? I just finished How to Steal a Dragon's Sword, and was intrigued by the game Excellinor the witch was playing. Hiccup made one pawn move, and said something like, "and you're really bad at chess! Check mate."
The chess game is obviously supposed to be symbolic, so my opinion might change over the last two books as I read them, but right now I like to think it's a (rare) checkmate by en passant. Given the context (the witch didn't see it coming) it's probably not a pawn promotion, and I like the idea of it being a revealed check.
Hiccup is the exact kind of person who would study every chess rule very carefully, so he would definitely know about en passant.
yeah, you're probably right he could've also queened his pawn and used the 2 rook mate putting the witch in checkmate but the "en passant" is more likely you'll have to ask the author lol
Anyone care to speculate on the chess game in the How to Train Your Dragon books? I just finished How to Steal a Dragon's Sword, and was intrigued by the game Excellinor the witch was playing. Hiccup made one pawn move, and said something like, "and you're really bad at chess! Check mate."
The chess game is obviously supposed to be symbolic, so my opinion might change over the last two books as I read them, but right now I like to think it's a (rare) checkmate by en passant. Given the context (the witch didn't see it coming) it's probably not a pawn promotion, and I like the idea of it being a revealed check.
Hiccup is the exact kind of person who would study every chess rule very carefully, so he would definitely know about en passant.